But friends and colleagues of the slain journalist say they are not heartened by the court's decision, which cited major irregularities in the February jury verdict that set the suspects free . Some Russians say it's just the latest evidence of the official ineptness – some say malfeasance – that may have doomed the case to remain unsolved from the very beginning.

"The Supreme Court has made a political decision, possibly on orders from higher structures," says Nadezhda Prusenkova, press spokesperson for Novaya Gazeta, the crusading opposition weekly the Ms. Politkovskaya wrote for. "The whole process was politicized, and we continue to believe that the people who should have found themselves accused are of a higher rank (than the four suspects who were eventually brought to trial, then acquitted)," she adds.

Two Chechen brothers, Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov, and a former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were tried on murder charges – although none was accused of being the actual trigger man. A fourth suspect, former officer of the FSB security service Pavel Ryaguzov, was alleged to have "abused his position" by providing the killers with Politkovskaya's address and other information used to locate and target her.